


Different

by whutnot



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, Lin not dealing with her ex in a healthy way, past linzin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26646610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whutnot/pseuds/whutnot
Summary: Lin loves Kya, she really does, but she still feels the pain of her breakup with Tenzin. Will her bitterness cost her Kya?
Relationships: Lin Beifong/Kya II
Comments: 3
Kudos: 111





	Different

**Author's Note:**

> Set about a year or so after Lin and Tenzin break up. Kya swooped in to pick up the pieces, but Lin is still struggling with her feelings.

The incessant ringing of the phone woke her, and she let out a violent curse as she turned over and saw the time. It was well past midnight, and she had to be up by five. Growling and promising to bring pain and suffering to whoever was responsible for disturbing her, Lin dragged herself out of bed and stomped over to the telephone.

“What!” she barked.

“Just what did you do to my sister!” The angry reply confused her on several levels. First, it was Tezin’s voice, and she had explicitly told him that he was never to call her unless he was dying so that she could come dance on his grave (Kya would tell her this was not a healthy way to deal with a breakup, but Lin found that it made her feel better). Secondly, why the hell was Tenzin awake at such an hour? Didn’t he have a kid now or whatever? In answer to her question, she heard a baby crying in the background. As if she wasn’t angry enough already, she had to have that little reminder of Tenzin’s new life. Fucking great.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” She no longer felt any need to curb her language around him. He had always found it distasteful, so she had made an effort for him while they were together. Funny how easily she had slid back into it after years of acting like she didn’t possess an extensive vocabulary of four letter words.

“Kya is here in tears, and all she will say is that it has to do with you.”

Lin really wished he could see her face, could see the disbelief and rage. “And you decided to call me up in the middle of the night to discuss it? Last time I checked, Kya was a grown woman who doesn’t need her little brother to protect her.” Because really, it was fucking ridiculous. Kya was four years older than Tenzin, five older than Lin. She was about to have her fortieth birthday. She should be able to handle a little fight.

“Lin, I know that we’ve had our…differences-”

“Fuck off.” Lin slammed the phone down, and ignored it when it rang again. If she didn’t need to be available for work, she would have ripped it from the wall. It rang again several times the next hour, but Lin never answered (if it was something important from work, someone would come get her).

Later, Lin would reflect that perhaps this was why she was so bad at relationships. Spirits bless Kya’s patience.

She should have known that Tenzin wouldn’t just let it go. He showed up at the station the next day (which was just perfect because that’s exactly what she needed. Her ex-boyfriend yelling at her in front of her subordinates), and demanded to speak with her. Being the son of the Avatar really went to his big, bald, fucking head.

His head wasn’t that big, but he left her for a woman fifteen years younger, and she had trouble curtailing her bitterness.

With more civility than she thought herself capable of, she led him into her office and carefully closed the door before rounding on him.

“Where the hell do you get off coming here and making demands!”

“You are being completely ridiculous, Lin! I wouldn’t have had to come here if you had just talked to me last night.” Tenzin’s scruffy beard seemed to shake with his anger. “I can’t believe you kicked out my sister, who you were only dating to get back at me-”

Lin let out a barking laugh. “For spirits’ sake, you think I’m dating her to get back at you? How fucking conceited can you be?”

He glared. “You’re not…you don’t even like women.”

“Shows how much you know. Kya and I were hooking up before I dated you.”

His face paled, and Lin took pleasure in his distress. “What?”

“Yeah. I fucked your sister a year before we got together.” He flinched at her language, and she knew she should back off. But Lin was nothing if not vindictive towards someone who had wronged her (that wasn’t necessarily true, but Tenzin was a special case. She had been prepared to give him her life, and he had left her.) “I’ve always been into women, not that it’s your business anymore. And I didn’t kick Kya out. She left. Seems to be a family trait.” The last part was meant to infuriate him, and it had the intended effect. The papers in her office whirled around, and his robes flapped in the wind he created. Lin stood solidly in the center of it all.

“We are not going to hash that out again! It’s been over a year.” Tenzin clenched his jaw and took a deep breath. “I don’t appreciate you stringing her along, Lin! Don’t play games with her.”

“You need to leave. I have work to do, and what happened yesterday is between me and Kya. Not you.” Because it really seemed like Kya had not told him what had happened, and Lin was not about to change that. And his comment about it being over a year since he had left her for Pema stuck deep in her chest, hurting in a way she was not prepared for. Not today. It wasn’t so much that he had left her. It wasn’t even that he had left her for a younger woman, though that didn’t help anything. It definitely had something to do with the fact that Pema had given birth barely nine months after Tenzin left Lin. Just long enough that he could reasonably deny cheating on her. Deep down, she knew he hadn’t. Not physically, at least. But the rest of the city certainly didn’t mind gossiping about it.

But mostly it had to do with the fact that she hadn’t seen it coming. They hadn’t been happy for a long time, but she had let things continue status quo. Why, she was never quite sure. She had loved Tenzin, but in a young way, in the way of someone who didn’t know what they wanted out of life. And when she had figured it out, it wasn’t the same thing that he wanted. They should have ended it then and there, but they hadn’t. Lin hadn’t. Tenzin was an airbending pacifist, a coward in emotional dealings, and he had never been able to leave her until Pema came along. Lin should have done it herself. Should have left him and called Kya five years ago. Six years, even. Seven if she was really honest with herself.

She should never have dated Tenzin in the first place. Her mother had always said so.

“Just go, Tenzin. This isn’t your problem. Go home to your wife and kid.” She cannot keep the bitterness from her voice, and he looks regretful for a moment, as if he wanted to apologize. Holding up a hand to stop him, she pointed to the door. “Go.” The previous year, she had heard quite enough of his apologies to last her a lifetime.

Glowering, she watched him leave, and she wondered if she would get any work at all done that day (part of her insisted that she call Kya and figure out if the other woman would be home that night, but the other part of her was too stubborn to admit that maybe she had done something wrong). 

Her temper was already legendary at the station, so her officers knew to keep out of her way. Only Saikhan seemed halfway brave enough to approach her, and only when absolutely necessary. They didn’t have to know what her fight with Tenzin had been about to know that she would be on a rampage. They had seen enough spats during her last couple of years with Tenzin to know what her mood would be. It embarrassed her that the dissolution of her relationship had been so public.

It was later than usual when she left the station, and Lin dragged her feet on her way home. She did not look forward to coming home to an empty apartment, because she had managed to convince herself that Kya was not coming back. Why would she? Lin was painfully aware of how unpleasant she was to be around. She knew she was a workaholic, that she was abrasive and harsh, that she held grudges and was angry more often than she wasn’t. It made sense that Kya wouldn’t want to put forth the effort of fixing a relationship with her. Tenzin hadn’t. Suyin hadn’t. Even her own fucking mother had left her instead of making things right.

So she was more than just a little surprised when she opened the door to smell dinner cooking.

“Kya?”

“I’m in the kitchen.”

Cautiously, for the emotion that had welled up inside her chest almost rendered Lin immobile, she hung up her coat and followed Kya’ voice. The other woman was bent over the stove, stirring a pot as rice cooked next to her.

“Hey.”

Kya looked up at her and gave a small smile. “Hey.”

Searching for the right words, Lin rubbed the back of her neck. “I um…I’m sorry for, you know…”

Kya raised a brow. “For comparing me to my brother and saying it was time I started taking my life seriously because I wasn’t exactly getting any younger?”

Lin winced. The words sounded so much worse as Kya said them in a flat, hurt voice. Of course, they had been meant to hurt. Lin always meant to hurt when she was angry. Later, she regretted it, but in the moment…she got her cruelty from her mother.

“Yeah. That.” Sighing, she stepped into the kitchen. “I was so angry. I’m…I’m sorry that I’m always so angry. I don’t know how…You deserve better.”

“You’re right. I do.” Kya moved the pot off the heat and looked Lin in the eye. “I can’t stay with you, Lin, unless you work on that. I love you, but I’m not going to let you say things like that to me.”

Nodding, Lin looked away, blinking back traitorous tears. “Tenzin accused me of using you and stringing you along. To get back at him. I’m not. I promise, Kya, that’s not what’s happening.”

“I know.”

Wiping a hand across her cheeks to pick up the tears, Lin turned back to Kya. “I wish you hadn’t gone to him. Kya, I can’t have him in my life right now. I just can’t.” It was confusing. Falling in love with Kya while still hating Tenzin and having the pain of his betrayal still cutting her so deeply. Sometimes she wondered if that would ever stop hurting. “He called me in the middle of the night, throwing around accusations. He came to my work. He wants me to move on.”

“I want you to move on, too.”

Lin sighed and covered her face with a hand. “You want me to move on because you want me to be happy. He wants me to move on to make things easier for him. So that he doesn’t feel as guilty. It’s not the same.” Moving her hands to her hips, Lin shook her head. “Please, Kya. I can’t…watch him have a family. I can’t be around him. I already have to listen to people gossip about it. People saying things about me. Wondering why he left me. Do you know what that’s like?”

“No.” Kya’s brows tipped in concern, and she took a step towards Lin. “I don’t know what that’s like. I do know what it’s like to have people concerned about my personal life. Don’t you think I heard plenty of rumors as to why I never settled down and got married?”

“Those rumors were true,” Lin reminded her. “You are into women.”

“And you’re cold and frigid. At least to Tenzin.”

Lin clenched her fist against the boiling anger. Her quick temper led her to believe that her father was probably a firebender. Not that she would ever know that, either. Fuck. But because Kya was currently the only good thing in her life, Lin bit her tongue against her immediate reply, which would have been devastatingly caustic and biting. “I wasn’t always,” she said instead, because Kya was not wrong. It was cruel of her to say, but it was not wrong. 

Kya deflated. “No. I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I know that I’m not easy to live with. I know that.” Lin held up her palms helplessly. “I’m trying.”

Instead of answering, Kya pulled her into a hug, pressing her face into Lin’s hair (they were both graying, Kya at a faster rate than Lin. It stung all the more to see a twenty-one year old Pema on Tenzin’s arm). She had never been agreeable to affection. Tenzin had always complained about it, but with Kya it was different. Maybe because Kya never expected reciprocation. Or perhaps because Kya only did it when she knew Lin was struggling for words. Whatever the reason, it didn’t chafe her when Kya touched her with tenderness.

“I love you, Lin.”

Eyes fluttering closed, Lin clutched at Kya’s clothes, trying to let herself heal. She did not want this pain, these wounds that seemed to stay fresh and raw no matter how much time had passed. She knew they would destroy her from the inside out if she did not do something about them. Kya was a healer. Perhaps she could help Lin heal her spiritual and emotional wounds as much as she healed physical ones.

She didn’t want to be weak.

And she didn’t want to be the bitter, cold, harsh woman that Tenzin left.

She wanted to be better. She wanted to be someone who wasn’t prone to lashing out at the people she cared about. She knew she had made progress over the last few months. But there was still so far to go.

After several moments, Kya pulled back. “I have to finish dinner.”

“I should wash up, anyway.” It had been a long day, and Lin had thrown herself into work. As she always did when her personal life was up in flames. When she was down to her loose pants and white tank top, she returned to the kitchen to set the table. This would be a partnership. She would ensure it. This would be a relationship of communication and support.

This would be different.


End file.
